(consuetudines Lauracienses), and in the space of fifty years they were granted to seven towns, some of them a considerable distance from Orleanness.  The towns which obtained them did not become by this qualification communes properly so called in the special and historical sense of the word; they had no jurisdiction of their own, no independent magistracy; they had not their own government in their hands; the king’s officers, provosts, bailiffs, or others, were the only persons who exercised there a real and decisive power.  But the king’s promises to the inhabitants, the rights which he authorized them to claim from him, and the rules which he imposed upon his officers in their government, were not concessions which were of no value or which remained without fruit.  As we follow in the course of our history the towns which, without having been raised to communes properly so called, had obtained advantages of that kind, we see them developing and growing in population and wealth, and sticking more and more closely to that kingship from which they had received their privileges, and which, for all its imperfect observance and even frequent violation of promises, was nevertheless accessible to complaint, repressed from time to time the misbehavior of its officers, renewed at need and even extended privileges, and, in a word, promoted in its administration the progress of civilization and the counsels of reason, and thus attached the burghers to itself without recognizing on their side those positive rights and those guarantees of administrative independence which are in a perfect and solidly constructed social fabric the foundation of political liberty.

[Illustration:  Insurrection in favor of the Commune at Cambrai——­214]

Nor was it the kings alone who in the middle ages listened to the counsels of reason, and recognized in their behavior towards their towns the rights of justice.  Many bishops had become the feudal lords of the episcopal city; and the Christian spirit enlightened and animated many amongst them just as the monarchical spirit sometimes enlightened and guided the kings.  Troubles had arisen in the town of Cambrai between the bishops and the people.  “There was amongst the members of the metropolitan clergy,” says M. Augustin Thierry, “a certain Baudri de Sarchainville, a native of Artois, who had the title of chaplain of the bishopric.  He was a man of high character and of wise and reflecting mind.  He did not share the violent aversion felt by most of his order for the institution of communes.  He saw in this institution a sort of necessity beneath which it would be inevitable sooner or later, Willy nilly, to bow, and he thought it was better to surrender to the wishes of the citizens than to shed blood in order to postpone for a while an unavoidable revolution.  In 1098 he was elected Bishop of Noyon.  He found this town in the same state in which he had seen that of Cambrai.  The burghers were at daily loggerheads